Energy

In
a ceremony last week at the Multnomah Athletic Club, Portland Mayor Sam Adams
challenged a gathering of BOMA Oregon’s leading commercial building
owners and managers (the organization represents over 30 million square feet of
commercial real estate) to participate in the 2012 Kilowatt Crackdown, a
two-year energy benchmarking competition for Portland metro-area commercial
buildings.

As
part of the City of Portland and Multnomah County’s ambitious goal to achieve
40 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 and 80 percent by 2050, Adams
encouraged the group to join the the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance's BetterBricks (a sponsor of this site), the Portland Development Commission, the Energy Trust of Oregon and Clark County's Clark Public Utilities to lead
the Portland-metro area in cutting energy use and costs.

“Portland’s
large commercial buildings consume considerable amounts of energy, and many
could use energy-efficiency upgrades,” said Adams. “We’ve assembled a
great partnership to create a valuable opportunity for Portland’s building
owners to save energy, save money, and improve their buildings.”

After
Adams' invitation, three large office-building managers pledged their
participation: Unico Properties (owner and manager of U.S. Bancorp Tower,
among many others), Langley Investment Properties, and the 200 Market
Building.

The
Kilowatt Crackdown is a public/private partnership to benchmark energy efficiency
in office buildings throughout the Portland region ensures voluntary
disclosure of energy information from local office building participants.
It is the successor to a competition first launched by BOMA Oregon in 2006. The new
partnership and two-year competition expects to double participation to
about 150 while expanding geographic reach throughout the metro
area. Participating buildings will benchmark energy performance through
the Energy Star Portfolio Manager Tool and seek to improve their
performance over time.

"Prospective
tenants demand efficient, environmentally-friendly buildings and are
willing to pay for it," said Scott Andrews, chair of the Portland
Development Commission. Andrews is also persident of commercial realtor Melvin
Mark. "Benchmarking for improved performance keeps us competitive in
the marketplace, and will help us deliver on our economic development
goals to foster the next wave of innovation in sustainable building."

By
working collaboratively to establish innovative green building practices, the
City of Portland has agreed not to mandate Energy Star disclosure. Disclosure
will remain voluntary.

To
give context to the figure of 150 office buildings in the Portland metro area (including Clark County, Washington) targeted by the Kilowatt Crackdown, there are over 10,000 office buildings that
are over 5,000 square feet, and 17,800 total (according to figures supplied by the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance). That means out of the total
office buildings in the area that over 5,000 square feet, the Kilowatt
Crackdown if it succeeds in signing up 150 participants would still only have
benchmarking data for about 1.5 percent of local offices. But the competition
has specifically targeted buildings over 40,000 square feet, of which there are
less than 1,500 in the area. So rather than 1.5 percent of local offices, it’s
arguably more like 10 percent.

How
does this compare with other cities seeking to lead the way on sustainability?
New York City recently began non-voluntary benchmarking effort that has
acquired energy data from over 2,000 large commercial properties. But NYC is
about 14 times bigger than Portland, so the Crackdown participant numbers are,
when you scale it, not nearly as dwarfed by NYC's mandatory program as it might
initially seem. But New York is also mandating benchmark data for municipal and
residential buildings, and data currently exists for over 3,000 buildings.

Should
Portland be mandating that its large office buildings provide energy data?
Absolutely. But it's also a valid step to make it a voluntary process in the
beginning, and it makes tremendous sense to partner with the industry before
diving in to legally obligating them to participate. (The only troubling fact
may be that PDC's chairman is also president of a commercial real estate
company, Melvin Mark. It creates the potential for conflict of interest.)

“BOMA Oregon has worked with numerous legislators to successfully defeat mandatory reporting requirements on the city and state level. And, together, we believe the building industry can manage itself, without government imposing any additional regulations,” said Susan Steward, Executive Director of BOMA Oregon, by email. “Building owners benchmark for a number of reasons: first, it’s the right thing to do. Second, it saves money which will be passed down to building tenants. And, third, it’s a win-win for the City of Portland and for the commercial real estate industry.”

So, it's a win-win if everybody does it, but if you make everybody do it, it's wrong? Hmm.

That said, Portland's business community has long perpetuated the idea that the city
and its government are not receptive to local business, so enacting voluntary
benchmarking measures first is a way to show that the city is as adept with the
carrot as it is with the stick. If the Kilowatt Crackdown were the final word
on office-building performance benchmarking, it might seem to be affecting a
small segment of the market. But instead, it's the beginning of something
larger. Ultimately all office buildings, or at least all the large ones, will
have to disclose their energy performance, and possibly that of other resources
too. Creating real market transformation ahead of regulation is a worthwhile
move that will more than pay for itself.

In the first decade after World War II, the G.I. Bill made it possible for a generation of former service members to obtain an education. And obtain they did, on a massive scale. A total of 2.3 million students enrolled in higher education programs in 1947 swelled to nearly 5 million by 1960. In many cases, it wasn't traditional four-year colleges this wave of new students attended, but one of the literally hundreds of community college and junior colleges built in that period.

Portland Community College's Sylvania campus came a little later, in 1968. But it is the oldest facility in the PCC system, as well as the largest. Like many community colleges in the area and in the nation, it has the institutional feel of the era from which it came, that of Brutalism: a subset of modernist architecture from the 1960s and 70s that was most often concrete in form and, while utopian in its idealistic intent, was often practically the opposite in reality: with banal, repetitive forms that today, despite their clean-lined geometry, feel oppressive for their lack of human scale, natural light and warm materials. In the hands of a few select masters, such as Louis Kahn, Brutalist architecture could be sublime. But walking amidst the concrete ubiquity of PCC Sylvania or, one yearns for the small forest adjacent to the campus. (Sylvan literally means "wooded".)

Currently, however, GBD Architects and Gerding Edlen Development are working with PCC on a group of initiatives, some being enacted as we speak and others on a future wish list, that will help the school potentially save millions of dollars in energy costs while giving PCC a new role in training workers the emerging green economy.

The E6/Net Zero Project, as it is known, seeks to transform PCC Sylvania both in terms of how it operates and how it feels to be there. If the school greenlights all of the sustainable investments recommended, it will actually become a net-producer of energy, generating more electricity than the campus needs. The plan also calls for the school to have close to net-zero water usage by collecting rainwater and recycling water.

Nowhere is the need for reinvention more evident than the central DeBernardis College Center building ("CC" for short), which houses administrative offices, a dining hall, the Women's Resource Center, the Multicultural Center, and more. It's the closest thing to a student union, but unless you're in a select few private offices, it could be noon or midnight and you'd never be able to tell inside the public gathering spaces. And environmentally speaking, although concrete holds its thermal mass like a basement and is thus energy efficient as a material, much of the wintertime heating and summertime cooling disappear through single-pane windows.

"It's got solid bones," GBD Architects' Kyle Andersen says of the concrete-ensconced PCC campus in Southwest Portland. "This thing is so stout. It’s all columns and beams and waffle slabs. You like to stand back and say, 'What were they thinking?' The architecture really handles you. Now those things are called barriers, and they cause problems for people with mobility issues and it’s disorienting. We talked about removing those barriers and humanizing the space.There’s a lot we’re doing taking private offices away from the windows and create smaller impromptu meeting spaces."

Besides the mechanical and energy side of reinventing PCC Sylvania, the architects are looking at humanizing the campus, where an open area between the buildings in the middle is disjointed because of a convoluted series of passageways and raised platforms, seemingly one added to the other without a sense of the congruent whole. When one moves from the center to the other buildings, it's a matter of following another prescriptive concrete pathway. Then there's the fact that PCC Sylvania students arrive overwhelmingly by car, thus making a surface parking lot surrounding much of the campus a kind of suburban-style banality of asphalt. Along with building design, the challenge is to make people change the way they get to the school.

Although net-zero energy and water are goals, the initial work at PCC Sylvania will focus on 165,000 square feet of renovation for existing buildings, within the strictures of funding in place via a recent bond measure. There will also be new construction, for a child development center construction. But for the most part, Andersen says, "These buildings are 40 plus years old. It’s upgrading the technology, adapting them for new ways of learning."

"Right now we’re base-lining the buildings: measuring the buildings’ performances so we can measure their improvements," the architect adds. "That’s really what it’s about to reach that net zero: starting with energy efficiency savings, and adding alternative energy over time. We’re looking at wind turbines, PV, even fuel cells."

"Students, faculty, facilities people—there are a lot of participants in the discussion. It’s really about consensus building. We meet with them depart by department, document their needs, draw it up, and give it to the contractor to see if it lines up with our budget. If we get it lined up, we have a framework plan. And we do that for every building. We’ve got to prioritize so there’s the most economic benefit and environmental benefit to the campus."

In some cases, Andersen says, grand plans gave way to the need for band-aids. "The whole E6 thing was supposed to come in and do all these changes and modifications. But then you realize there are changes in the system themselves that need changing. Insulation was falling off," he explains. "There are these tunnels under the buildings, with pipes running through them. There’s valving that was stuck open. We’re insulating pipes and replacing valves. We found that the boilers were really low-efficiency. We found by the time it got to the swimming pool, the hot water dropped by 30 degrees. We’re also adding a de-humidification unit, and taking the waste heat to pump it back into the air or water. That thing will save a couple hundred thousand dollars a year in energy."

As changes big and small are made, students will be along for the ride, not just receiving a better Sylvania campus but learning the kinds of trades that will bring them jobs in the emerging sustainable economy. "The workforce training that’s going on at PCC is a key component," Andersen says. "You'll be able to how to take care of building commissioning, photovoltaic cells. That’s why community colleges are bursting at the seems, why enrollment at PCC Sylvania up 30 percent in last year or two."

Already ties are being made. Vestas, the wind-turbine manufacture that recently located its American headquarters in Portland, now serves as an adviser for the Renewable Energy Systems Program offered at the PCC Sylvania Campus. The program is part of Sylvania’s Electronic Engineering Technology Program. SolarWorld is also a long-time partner organization with PCC’s Microelectronics Program, housed at the Rock Creek Campus. Over time, these partnerships and initiatives can combine and be centralized at Sylvania -- even if there's a boiler to fix, parking to reconfigure, and a host of concrete buildings to re-imagine.

"Our path has changed considerably. It’s been totally modified," Andersen explains. "We’re having to put money in different places to get to the root causes. But we still have our sights on that net zero campus. It's just a question of how we get there."

A University of Oregon architecture program team has advanced to the semifinals of the Clean Tech 2011 Open Business Competition, keeping them in the running for the $250,000 national grand prize and an opportunity to present before 2,000 attendees at The Cleantech Open’s Global Forum in November.

The mission of the Cleantech Open is to find, fund and foster “the big ideas” that address today’s most urgent energy, environmental and economic challenges. And Innovative Invironments, a Eugene start-up company with collaborations from University of Oregon architecture and business school graduates, advanced to the semifinals with its solar awning , which was developed at the UO High Performance Environments Lab (HiPE) by professor Ihab Elzeyadi.

Known as SolarStream, the awning is described as a three-in-one green building product, with its indoor LED luminaire, daylighting reflector, and PV shade. Its modular system is comprised of conventional photovoltaic cells and shading that attach to a building's exterior, providing shade to windows while reflecting light back inside. Elzeyadi and team tested the awning’s performance on the side of a university building and found that it generates approximately six to eight times the energy necessary to light the building. The awning also lowers temperatures inside, reducing stress on cooling facilities.

Solar awning on Onyx Bridge at UO (image courtesy University of Oregon)

“Our state and the entire region need new, innovative and high-growth companies now more than ever,” said Byron McCann, co-chair of the Pacific Northwest Cleantech Open. “It’s hard enough to start any kind of business, much less one in industries as complex and capital intensive as energy and sustainability. All of us involved are ready to roll up our sleeves and help these entrepreneurs and their innovations succeed.”

Semifinalists will present their final business plan and investor pitch to a judging committee of investors and experts, which will select the three finalists at the regional event in October in Seattle. Those finalists will compete with others from four regions around the U.S. for the national grand prize.

Besides the technical capabilities of the solar awning project, it also represents a potential new avenue of partnership between the University of Oregon and entrepreneurial efforts made by its professors and students.

“There is much uncharted territory between the scientific research that provides innovative new materials and the commercialization of those ideas into products,” writes Lee van der Voo of Sustainable Business Oregon, “But Elzeyadi and the university of Oregon envision another possibility for the eSolar Awning, a corporation representing UO and the laboratory, along with a commercial partner to manufacture products could lie ahead.”

"There's a potential to have a company that would really specialize in these exterior treatments for the building and the building facades," Elzeyadi told van der Voo. "It will take a little bit of two sides coming up with enough people who are interested to draft and design what that company would look like as an R&D company that would be tied to full scale production, and the university becomes part of that."

Elzeyadi's lab is in the process of converting into the Façade Innovation Technology Testing Facility, made possible with funding from Oregon BEST, the university, grants and donations. The facility will be actively testing a variety of sunscreens, windows, solar equipment and other building materials for commercial viability. “Essentially, it will provide a facility to practice on,” van der Voo adds, “one outside of an arena of live construction, where the price for failing can be high.”

Elzeyadi believes sustainable architecture remains rooted too much in best practices, without innovative thinking based in hard science. Many times people have done that to save them money" or simply because it's been successfully done before. The Façade Innovation Technoloty Testing Facility will help engender the necessary market transformation to elevate not just solar technology but a range of products, materials and methods.

On the second Wednesday of the month, the AIA Committee on the Environment (COTE) invites the design community to bring their lunch to the AIA for an informal “greenbag” lecture. The talks are generally themed around green building and planning with past topics focusing on Net Zero Apartments and community energy production. Milos Jovanovic, of Root Design-Build, presented May’s talk on “Passive House Principles.”

Many Americans may find these airtight houses that are powered on the amount of electricity it takes to run a hairdryer to be cutting edge. Yet, the Passivhaus concept and subsequent Passive House Standards were developed more than twenty years ago in Germany. The homes rely mainly on solar gain for heating and are passively cooled during warmer months. These passive strategies draw roots from vernacular building. Jovanovic showed a slide of a cluster of traditional homes built into an Icelandic hillside. Like these homes with their heavy sod roofs, Passive Houses use high thermal mass and insulation to regulate indoor temperatures. Both types of dwellings are oriented to capture solar gain from winter sunlight.

There are only three main guidelines for achieving Passive House certification. First, primary energy use from electricity, hot water, and heating/ cooling must be capped to120 kWh. Basically this requires that there be no mechanical HVAC unit. Instead, many of these homes have solar hot water heaters and the spaces are heated passively by occupants, equipment, and solar gain. Second, and most controversial, the home must be airtight with no more than 0.6 air changes per hour. To achieve this, all penetrations must be carefully sealed and a Heat Recovery Ventilation unit (HRV) is installed to strictly control air exchanges. Third, space heating and cooling must each not exceed 15 kWh. The HRV doubles to provide the extra heating and cooling needs.

Unlike LEED and its prescriptive system of credits, there are no rules, strategies or technologies specifically stipulated by the guidelines. To achieve the low energy use standards, however, typically demands the use of super-insulation, high thermal mass, triple paned glazing, insulated doors, an HRV, low energy appliances, and elements that help regulate the exterior climate such as vegetation and reflective surfaces. The Passive House Institute has developed its own energy modeling software where designers input the values from wall systems, windows, and foundations to determine whether the house is meeting the standards and which areas need to be improved. This is followed up with in-field testing to insure the model’s accuracy.

Shift House in Hood River (image courtesy Root Design-Build)

In these days where climate change, peak oil, and fears of nuclear fall-out are growing concerns, Passive Houses sound like a great panacea to the energy crisis. The typical Passive House uses a mere 15 kW per year. When you compare this number to the average US home, which uses 130 kW per year, it quickly becomes apparent why Jovanovic sees this as the next revolution in the field of green building.

The economics of building and operating a passive house are equally intriguing. A major goal for Jovanovic is to achieve Passive House Standards while on the budget of a typical home. He is in the midst of doing this with Shift House, a 2,200 square foot Hood River residence with a budget of just $330,000. The added costs associated with the efficient walls, windows, and doors are made up for by omitting the mechanical system. Shift House is designed using quality products that last longer and need to be replaced less often to help reduce maintenance costs. Lastly, the long term energy savings attributed to minimizing heat loss through the envelope help offset the more expensive cost of the wall systems.

Based on these points, I am a little surprised I haven’t seen more Portlanders rushing out to get triple paned windows or demanding architects use structural insulated panels (SIPs). Yet as a practitioner in an office that has a great deal of respect for traditional details, I can see why we are skeptical of this technology. Like the members in the audience, I found myself asking, “Where is the dew point in the twelve inch wall? How does the rainscreen get attached? If the house must be airtight, how do you ventilate the roof? Can you really limit all thermal bridges? Are the windows operable? Is the bathroom, at least, ventilated?”

For many folks, the technologies are still a little unsettling. Most of the products Jovanovic has used in his own projects, from windows to building tape, must be ordered from Europe. The construction practices and materials are new to contractors and require a learning curve. Jovanovic showed an image of a crane hoisting the large roof SIPs into place, a construction technique that appeared costly and cumbersome for a single-family residence. After so much attention has been focused on Sick Building Syndrome, the concept of an airtight house, even with an HRV, still sounds like an unhealthy environment. What will it take for us to shift our paradigm and be comfortable with these diagrams and figures?

Jovanovic patiently answered each of the questions from the audience with assured confidence. He described the architectural details and new systems he used in Shift House, that are frequently employed in other Passive Houses, in response to people’s skepticism.

In detailing Shift House, Jovanovic solved the problem of thermal bridges by separating the structural system from the insulation. An eight-inch-thick structural insulated panel (SIP) forms the basis of the wall system by acting as both insulation and structure. (SIPs are composed of two OSB panels with rigid insulation sandwiched between them.) A four-inch layer of rigid insulation is attached to the outside of the SIP to limit any thermal bridges at framing joints, openings, and additional structure. The combined layer of rigid and SIP creates, in essence, two cavities which can house mechanical, plumbing, electrical, and other structural elements. Siding and battens, making up the rainscreen, are attached by long screws that tie through the outer layer of rigid insulation and into the OSB panel of the SIP. The overall wall system is rated at R-40.

The walls are not all that is super-insulated. A great deal of heat loss in the typical home is attributed to exposed foundation walls. In Shift House, the concrete rat slab is topped with a vapor barrier and then a nine-inch layer of rigid insulation. A final skim coat of concrete forms the finish floor and adds more thermal mass to the structure. For the roof, twelve-inch thick SIPs are positioned into a gable form and a six-inch layer of rigid insulation is added to the outside bringing it to R-72, nearly double what is required by Code. Jovanovic noted that the roof is ventilated by an air gap between the outer layer of rigid and the standing seam metal roof, allowing the interior to remain airtight.

Many audience members expressed concern about the consequences of an airtight envelope. Jovanovic asserted that passive houses like Shift House have as much clean air entering as regular houses. The only difference is that air is let in at a controlled rate by the HRV. Moreover, the house functions like the average American Home. There may be subtle differences in how the systems operate, but the outcome is the same. The kitchen range hoods must be vented with special systems, but they still vent to the outside. The windows may be triple-paned and thermally broken, but they are operable. In many cases, the materials cost the same as traditional products of the same quality. Jovanovic noted that Shift House’s European windows cost the same as Marvin’s triple paned line.

While everyone in the green building community can be excited about Passive Houses’ energy efficiency, I can’t help but getting an image of a huge Styrofoam container with a house inside. How much embodied energy does it take to produce these walls in comparison to the energy they save? How many petrochemicals? Passive House Standards force designers to consider the environment and climate in which they are building in order to determine the best passive strategies. They allow for functional homes with beautiful spaces. I agree that in the near future it will be a necessity for homes to operate on the amount of energy Passive Houses use. Yet, it seems like an oxymoron that these homes are often built using materials derived from the same resources the homes are attempting to reduce demand on through their energy efficiency. I applaud Passive House, but hope that it evolves to include a standard that addresses embodied energy.

Juliette Beale is a designer with Portland's Emerick Architects and a member of the American Institute of Architects/Portland Committee on the Environment. COTE Greenbag talks are held the 2nd Wednesday of the month from noon-1pm at the AIA Center for Architecture, 403 NW 11th Ave. The next talk, scheduled for June 16, is entitled “Urbanize and Insulate: The Development of a Fossil Fuel Exit Strategy ” and presented by Dylan Lamar of Green Hammer Construction.

Earlier this month, a potentially inspiring and innovative sustainable building project in eastern Oregon received criticism because of the coal plant from which its otherwise efficiently used power is drawn.

The new Facebook data center in Prineville, Oregon is a boon to that small town's local economy. It's also impressively innovative in its use of less energy. Facebook's team designed stripped-down servers that are 38 percent more efficient and 24 percent cheaper than those sold by major server makers. And the data center itself, expected to open next month, is being cooled entirely with air, helping to reduce both its energy bills and carbon footprint. What's more, Facebook is sharing these innovations with its industry competitors rather than acting in the exceedingly protective, proprietary manner that is the norm with data center.

“We are not the only ones who need the kind of hardware that we are building out,” said Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg, as quoted in a New York Times piece by Miguel Helft. By sharing the company’s designs, Zuckerberg explained, Facebook would benefit because as more companies adopt those designs, the cost of the custom servers would decline.

Yet Facebook has received nearly as much criticism as praise for the Prineville data center. The reason? The majority of Prineville's electricity, like that of Oregon in general, is generated by coal. Facebook is also building a data center in North Carolina, where the local utility relies heavily on coal and nuclear power, and has received criticism for that siting decision as well.

“If Facebook wants to be a truly green company, it needs to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions,” Casey Harrell, climate campaigner at Greenpeace, said in the Times story. “The way to do that is decouple its growth from its emissions footprint by using clean, renewable energy to power its business instead of dirty coal and dangerous nuclear power.”

Let's pause for a moment and imagine that we don't care about the environmental impact of tons of toxic coal emissions being spewed into the Pacific Northwest's atmosphere. Even the most cynical skeptic about the Boardman coal plant's environmental degradation, however, might stop to consider that Boardman is also polluting the economic environment.

Granted, Facebook located in Prineville despite the criticisms about Boardman coal. But that's not to say the next big company won't think twice. What business investment are we losing by hitching our energy needs to coal? What corporate headquarters relocation, or new factory, might be avoiding Oregon because of coal?

Now let's turn the argument around and suppose for a moment that the economic argument doesn't sway you. Facebook still came to Prinville, after all. Every region has its drawbacks, be it coal in Oregon or urban decay in Detroit or violent reactionaries in Arizona. But what if it is a roll of the dice away from giving your kid a birth defect?

Studies have shown that one in six women in the United States of childbearing are age has enough mercury in her body to put her child at risk of learning disabilities, developmental disorders, and a lower IQ if she becomes pregnant.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, an average coal fire plant in one year produces 3,700,000 tons of CO2 10,200 tons of nitrogen oxide, 10,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, 720 tons of carbon monoxide, and 170 pounds of mercury.

The Boardman plant was authorized in 1975, just two years before the 1977 Clean Air Act amendments, which would have required the plant to meet stricter emission standards.[4] The plant currently accounts for 65% of stationary SO2 emissions, 35% of NOx emissions, and 7% of CO2 emissions in Oregon

Things could be changing one way or another. On March 16, the EPA proposed to update clean air standards to protect public health by stopping coal-fired power plants from spewing toxic pollution like mercury, lead, arsenic, chromium, nickel and acid gases into our air and water on a three-year schedule. The proposed rule would save an estimated 17,000 lives every year nationally and will cut mercury and acid gases by 91 percent once the industries comply.

The EPA is now collecting comments to gauge public support for finalizing the rule. But utility executives are already fighting the update. They say it is not enough time for companies to adjust to the complex regulations. As reported today by Reuters' Ayesha Rascoe, Republicans in the House of Representatives said this week that they plan to introduce legislation that would delay the implementation of the toxic pollution rules for utilities, as well as those for boilers and cement plants.

Meanwhile, as reported by McClatchy Newspapers and others, the EPA also this week announced a settlement with another coal-polluting utility, the Tennessee Valley Authority over pollution from 11 coal-fired power plants in at least three states.

The agreement, which addresses violations of the Clean Air Act at plants in Alabama, Kentucky and Tennessee, requires the TVA to invest an estimated $3-5 billion on new and upgraded pollution controls. It must close at least 18 of its 59 coal-fired boilers and install emission-control equipment on almost all the remaining plants. TVA also agreed to invest $350 million for clean energy projects to reduce pollution, save energy and protect public health. The 11 plants provide power to roughly 9 million people in Alabama, and parts of Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

The National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service will also receive $1 million to "improve, protect or rehabilitate forest and park lands that have been impacted by emissions" from TVA's plants.

If the Boardman plant doesn't shut soon, Portland General Electric could be facing similar legislative action.

Portland General Electric's original plan involved operating the plant until 2040; this would have required installing over $500 million of pollution control equipment on the plant by 2017 in order to comply with federal and state clean air standards. In April 2010, PGE decided to close the plant in 2020 to save $470 million in upgrades they would have been required to install had they kept the plant operating until 2040. In December 2010, the state's environmental protection agency approved the plans for the 2020 closing. But that still means nine more years of pollution.

The plan approved by the EQC includes an option for Boardman to close in early 2016 with even fewer pollution controls if PGE chooses. But will they ever choose that?

The Sierra Club is among environmental groups suing PGE, charging that it should have installed a full suite of pollution controls when the plant opened. That lawsuit could force PGE to close Boardman earlier, as could the EPA's proposed new pollution regulations and an Environmental Protection Agency violation issued this fall that accused PGE of operating the plant without adequate controls since 1998.

But even if the lawsuit fails, the case of Facebook's data center is a wake-up call. It's not PGE that is hurt by companies deciding to locate in Oregon or elsewhere based on coal emissions. Facebook decided to come here anyway, but they have not necessarily blazed a trail for others to follow, at least not until the good of a more efficient data center is no longer offset by the black soot coming from down the road.

A little over 65 years ago, my grandfather walked the barren streets of Nagasaki, Japan as part of the US Navy and America's occupying force after the end of World War II. The landscape was all but devoid of buildings, and the remaining citizens had been hit with intense radiation.

Then in 2004 and 2006, I made my own trips to Japan. I remember telling my grandpa, shortly before he passed away in 2007, about going to the most vibrant urban place I had ever encountered, Tokyo, and how thankful I was that the nation, which for some inexplicable reason has drawn three generations of us there, could finally be seen prospering. By that time, the economic boom of Japan's 1980s and given way to more than a decade of economic decline. But that's nothing compared to radiation.

Flash forward to 2011, and it's a bitter irony that the only nation to suffer a nuclear bomb detonation on its soil is the same nation reminding us that nuclear power is a terrible mistake.

Nagasaki, 1945 (photo by Donald M. Libby)

Yes, it's "clean" power in that it doesn't send carbon or pollution into the atmosphere like fossil fuels. Yes, nuclear plant accidents like Fukushima, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl are the exception to the rule. But even one exception is arguably too many when a nuclear meltdown has the capacity to kill millions of people over decades.

In today's New York Times, Eric Lichtblau reports that the effect of Japan's post-tsunami nuclear accident at the Fukushima plant is calling into question "a decade-long renaissance of nuclear energy — a resurgence that began in earnest under President George W. Bush and has led President Obama to seek a $36 billion expansion in loan guarantees to finance reactors at a time when other programs are being slashed."

It seems the uptake in nuclear energy investing over the past decade caught many unaware. Despite the millions or billions committed by Congress and the chief executive, most Americans associate nuclear power either with its past accidents or by the skewing satire of The Simpsons, where three-eyed fish swim outside Springfield's power plant and a clueless buffoon would rather chomp donuts than carry out his duties as safety inspector.

Nuclear has in some respects over the past decade ridden the coattails of sustainable and renewable energy. Because it doesn't emit carbon into the atmosphere, the argument goes, nuclear is a way to reduce greenhouse gases.

“It was a brilliant campaign,” Tyson Slocum, an energy expert at Public Citizen, which opposes nuclear energy because of concerns about its safety, security and cost, told Lichtblau. "While everyone was focused on shutting down coal plants, they had a couple of years to themselves to just talk to the American public in very sophisticated ad campaigns and to reintroduce a generation of Americans to nuclear power,” he said. “That was very powerful.”

Nuclear industry firms and their employees also contributed more than $4.6 million in the last decade to members of Congress from both parties, including President Obama's senatorial and presidential campaign

Yet it's another bitterly ironic turn of phrase to call nuclear "clean" energy. If it's so clean, how come we have to bury the waste a mile underground and wait a thousand years for it to subside?

But nuclear executives in America, ready to defend their turf, have already held 20 briefings for Washington lawmakers and others about the events in Japan and the potential lessons learned at home. "They have been putting out guidance on increased safeguards for reactors, and giving reporters tours of nuclear plants," Lichtblau reports. "The message: Despite the events in Japan, nuclear is a safe, affordable and “clean” energy source that does not spew harmful carbons into the environment or rely on foreign producers."

“We surely should avoid a rush to judgment,” Jeff Merrifield, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said in one of a series of videos that the Nuclear Energy Institute, the leading trade group, has put out on its website since Japan’s tsunami and ensuing damage reactors. The United States, he Merrifield, should “continue to move forward with building those plants because it’s the right thing for our nation.”

However, polls in the last two weeks have shown dimmed support for nuclear power. Funny how a hellacious nuclear accident will do that.

“The risk is just so great if there’s a screw-up,” said David Hamilton, director of energy programs for the Sierra Club, which opposes the expansion of nuclear energy (also in Lichtblau's story). “The nuclear renaissance was already hanging by a thread, and the Japanese disaster may have cut the thread.”

It all begs the question: how much nuclear power does the US use? That can be a confusing question. In the media, for example, prominent US officials have stated recently that the country gets 20 percent of its energy right now from nuclear power. In fact, nuclear power is responsible for 8.6 percent of total US energy consumption.

20.7 percent of total US electricity consumption, including electrical energy generation and transmission losses, is attributed to nuclear power. The 20.7%, or 8.39 QBtu, is made up of 2.19 QBtu of electricity delivered to the place of use, and 6.2 QBtu of energy losses from generation (waste heat) and transmission.

The nonprofit Architecture 2030 has also provided these figures on nuclear:

There are 104 nuclear reactors currently operating in the US with a net summer capacity of 100,755 MW. Nuclear energy provides 3.1% of total US delivered energy; 8.6% of total U.S. energy consumption is attributed to nuclear energy. Nuclear energy provides 17.1% of total US delivered electricity, while 20.7% of total national electricity consumption is attributed to nuclear energy. It takes approximately thirty-seven 1000MW nuclear reactors to produce one Quad (quadrillion Btu) of delivered energy.

Of the 104 nuclear reactors in the US, 4.8 percent are older than 40 years, 38.5 percent are older than 35 years, and over half are older than 30 years.

Nuclear reactors in the U.S. are licensed to operate for 40 years. Owners can file with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for operating extensions. It costs approximately $300-500 million to decommission a nuclear plant. There are 13 potential reactors that are currently under review for a new commercial license.

Subsidies for ongoing nuclear reactors range from 0.74 - 4.16 c/kWh for investor owned utilities (IOUs) and 1.53 - 5.77 c/kWh for publicly owned utilities (POUs). Subsidies for new reactors range from 5.01 - 11.42 c/kWh for IOUs and 4.20 - 8.68 c/kWh for POUs. The IAEA estimates that approximately 20 percent of nuclear reactors around the world are currently operating in areas of significant seismic activity.

Here in the Northwest, like many regions of the country, we went through the complete cycle with nuclear power. Trojan nuclear power plant once stood alongside the Columbia River in Rainier, Oregon. After being built in 1970, Trojan eventually represented more than 12% of the electrical generation capacity of Oregon. But it was shut down twenty years early, after a cracked steam tube released radioactive gas into the plant in 1992.

Environmental opposition dogged Trojan from its inception, including non-violent protests organized by the Trojan Decommissioning Alliance starting in 1977. Scores of demonstrators were arrested, and in December 1977 a jury found 96 protesters not guilty of criminal trespass. There was another protest in August 1978, which led to about 280 arrests.

Most of the protesting in America had come over nuclear weapons, not nuclear power. But as is our legacy, Oregonians were progressive and ahead of the curve in seeing the dangers of nuclear power. The very danger that motivated protestors in the 1970s, a radioactive accident, happened just as they feared. A few years ago, the cooling tower's demolition was cause for celebration.

It's not to say anyone is looking to bring nuclear power back to Oregon. We are lucky to receive an overwhelming majority much of our power from Bonneville Dam, and the region has also become a leader in sustainable buildings and energy - although much of our power also comes from coal.

Oregon's population is also growing relatively fast. Recently released 2010 census data shows that between 2000 and 2010 the state grew to over 3.8 million, a 12 percent increase. By 2030 the Willamette Valley alone is projected to be 3.7 million, but Oregon could become even more populous than projected given the southwest’s ongoing problems with water and heat. We need to assure that the nuclear option doesn’t rear its head another decade or two in the future when the public has begun to forget, again, of the deaths and cancers wrought by these disasters.

It’s not to say there isn’t always some kind of tradeoff. Eschewing nuclear could mean the United States or other countries turn more to fossil fuels in the interim years, until alternative energy makes up the gap. Fossil fuel emissions are of course not only a public health problem, but one changing the climate of the planet through too much carbon.

What's more, as a March 23 Good magazine story argued pretty successfully, technically deaths around the world from nuclear energy-related accidents are still dwarfed by the deaths caused by fossil fuels. Coal accounts for 161 deaths for every teraWatt hour (TWh) of energy produced. Oil accounts for 36. Nuclear accounts for 0.04.

Even so, when nuclear goes bad, it really goes bad. In the past it has only killed hundreds or thousands. Yet if it happens to the wrong plant in the wrong place, the death toll, once all the decades of contamination are figured in, could reach millions.

Maybe I’m just a Generation X member who remembers the nuclear protests and the fear of annihilation too vividly. Or maybe I’m just too sensitive to the headline of the day, which now happens to be rooted mostly in Japan’s ongoing struggles with the Fukushima nuclear plant. Or perhaps I’m superstitious: nuclear power seems to me like an otherworldly force with which humans were not meant to encounter, a contemporary bite into the forbidden apple that leaves a thousand-year aftertaste.

But today watching the headlines in Japan, it’s hard not to feel re-committed to defining clean energy as something that doesn’t give millions of people cancer or fish three eyes. And I think of the protestors of the ‘70s and ‘80s fighting Trojan when the mainstream culture perhaps thought they were naïve and too idealistic, but today come across as much wiser and more prophetic than the nuclear lobby doing its own brand of damage control.

Last week an emerging national star of politics and sustainability, Van Jones, was in Portland to deliver a speech and advocate for green jobs.

After a speech at the University of Oregon's White Stag building, and just hours before President Obama's State of the Union, Jones met with about 30 business leaders, elected officials and renewable energy advocates "to share his perspective on policy and the political environment as it pertains to clean energy," as Christina Williams reported in the Portland Business Journal (which, weirdly, keeps its 'Sustainable Business Oregon' section on an entirely separate website.)

Van Jones, named by Time magazine as one of its "Heroes of the Environment" 2008, was also previously a special adviser to President Obama on green jobs. But resigned in September 2009 when a preposterous controversy arose over his past political activities. Jones had made a public comment disparaging congressional Republicans, who of course do the same thing in reverse from minute to minute. His name appearing on a petition for 911Truth.org, and last time I checked it is perfectly legal to hold conspiracy theories. (President Kennedy's assassination, anyone?) Finally, Jones allegedly had associations Marxist group during the 1990s. This, however, omits one key context: In 1990, Jones was 22 years old. I believe it was Winston Churchill who, rightly or wrongly (or half correct), said a young conservative has no heart and an old liberal has no brain.

More importantly than all this, the Yale Law School-educated Jones is also the author of The Green Collar Economy, which rose at one point to #12 on the New York Times bestseller list - something all but unheard of for a sustainable business book. Here's a short excerpt:

It takes energy to make anything and everything. So when energy costs go up, all prices tend to go up. At the same time, those very same steep energy prices eat into consumer confidence. They depress nonessential pending and discourage hiring. So consumers stop buying, employers hold back on making job offers, and tourists travel much less. As a result, the economy starts to stall—with all the attendant job loss and pain. Yet prices throughout the economy, driven by rising fuel costs, keep going up just the same. The result is that society finds itself stretched on the rack, with soaring costs and punging jobs puling the body of the nation in opposite directions.

The solution for the economy is simple: deliberately cut demand for energy and intelligently increase its supply…But all of that is a lot easier said than done.

So who will do the hard and noble work of actually building the green economy? The answer: millions of ordinary people, many of whom do not have good jobs right now. According to the National Renewable Energy Lab, the major barriers to a more rapid adoption of renewable energy and energy efficiency are not financial, legal, technical or ideological. One big problem is simply that green employers can’t find enough trained, green-collar workers to do all the jobs.

Let’s be clear: the main piece of technology in the green economy is a caulk gun. Hundreds of thousands of green-collar jobs will be weatherizing and energy-retrofitting every building in the United States."

In his talk last week, Jones was critical of sustainability as boutique endeavor, citing the cost of organic, healthy food at markets like Whole Foods (he cited the "Whole Paycheck" moniker). He also took on the regulation-laden and subsidy supported energy market.

Jones the environmentalist is not to be confused with recording artist Van Jones

"Every American should be able to be an energy producer, should be able to produce energy for themselves or with their community rather than be an energy serf," Jones said.

He also predicted that the likely next steps by the Obama administration would be establishing a national goal for clean energy production and a green bank to finance renewable energy investments. Sure enough, later that night in his SOTU address, the president called for 80 percent of the nation's electricity needs to come from clean sources by 2035. "It's a fight worth having," Jones told the assembled Portlanders. "Clean energy companies have gone down because banks are sitting on their money...We've got to be able to bring the private capital into play."

North and Northwest Portland area homeowners looking to control their energy costs by using solar electricity have a new helping hand to guide them through the steps of a home installation: Solarize Northwest and Solarize North Portland, two new grassroots, community-based projects coordinated by Neighbors West -Northwest and North Portland Neighborhood Services.

The Neighbors West-Northwest Coalition is an initiative of the city’s Bureau of Planning and sustainability to promote direct civic participation by supporting community efforts at the neighborhood level. BPS provides a forum for community engagement and education, and is a catalyst for action. This innovative, interdisciplinary approach strengthens Portland's position as an international model of sustainable development practices and commerce. North Portland Neighborhood Services, located in the Historic Kenton Firehouse, is the neighborhood office that serves residents in the 11 neighborhood associations in the North Portland district.

Solarize Portland neighborhood projects are designed to simplify the process of going solar and bring cost reductions through volume purchasing. Free workshops make the process easy to understand by covering topics such as the size of system to purchase, budgeting and financing, and how to get started.

Online enrollment for both group purchase projects is now open through March 31, 2011. You can view the schedule of free workshops in North Portland here and Northwest Portland here.

The launch of the twin Solarize projects is being assisted in a public-private partnership between BPS and the nonprofit Energy Trust of Oregon. The city is providing strategic assistance and coordination, and Energy Trust is providing technical assistance and cash incentives to help lower the upfront cost of the solar electric systems.

The new initiatives in North and Northwest follow two previous successful Solarize campaigns. Last fall’s Solarize Southwest was initiated by local neighborhood leaders who wanted to increase the amount of renewable energy generated in Southwest Portland with the side benefit of reducing carbon emissions that cause global warming. The project was structured so that the price of solar panel installation would go down as more neighbors joined the effort.

"Solarize Southwest was perhaps the single most satisfying project I've worked on at SW Neighborhoods," said Leonard Gard, a project coordinator with Southwest Neighborhoods. "The shared experience of residents attending workshops together and installing solar energy equipment at the same time helped to create a strong sense of community amongst those who participated, and helped us fulfill our mission to the community: to empower citizen action to improve and maintain the livability of southwest neighborhoods."

The group purchasing created a 15-25 percent savings below average prices. The discount, in addition to current available tax credits and Energy Trust cash incentives, gave Solarize Southwest participants significant cost savings. Southeast Portland, Northeast Portland, and Southwest Portland have all run successful Solarize efforts, collectively installing over 1 megawatt of residential solar energy in 2010.

Solarize Southwest was built upon the first Solarize project in Southeast Portland in 2009 that was developed together by SE Uplift and Energy Trust, and quickly became a model now being used by other neighborhoods in Portland, as well as the Cities of Pendleton and Salem.

The Portland metro area is seeing a significant increase in solar for both volume and non-volume installations. With almost eight megaWatts of solar power installed across the city, enough energy to power almost 700 homes, Portlanders have helped prevent 4,000 metric tons of carbon emissions. A total of 38 solar installations were completed on homes citywide in 2008. In 2009, that number increased to 123 (32 percent were Solarize installations). The growth of the local residential market has experienced a 400 percent increase in installations from 2008 to 2010. And now the City of Portland is nearing its goal for installing 10 megaWatts by 2012.

In the current January 7 edition of the Portland Business Journal, Lee Van Der Voo reports that the City of Gresham has found a way to power about 80 percent of its sewage treatment plant's electricity needs (currently about $500,000 per year) through a unique micro-hydro project involving outfall pipes.

This is a great example of both state-of-the-art alternative energy technology and green power at its most primative. Centuries ago the site of a riverside mill with a giant wheel generating power by the movement of the water current was ubiquitous. In fact, watermill technology dates back to ancient Greece.

The City of Gresham's sewage treatment plant, at 201st Avenue and Sandy Boulevard, treats sewage for 108,000 people and releases 13 million gallons of treated wastewater to the Columbia River each day. The water falls through a 48-inch pipe and down a slope to the river. Now the city is placing a turbine in the water path.

The project would cost $800,000, with half of the cost funded by a state Business Energy Tax Credit and a grant from Energy Trust of Oregon. So by spending about $400,000, the City of Gresham will reduce its power bill at the treatment plant from $500,000 to $100,000. In other words, a one-time expenditure of $400,000 will allow for $400,000 in annual savings: a one-year payback.

Once added to the pipe, the water turbine will have a peak energy generation capacity of about 50 kiloWatts. But that will be augmented by the plant's solar power, adding about 419 kiloWatts. That is not a gigantic amount of power, but 50 kiloWatts alone is enough to power about five single-family homes annually. Even so, given the open-and-shut case for the money it will save, the treatment-plant turbine is the latest of many reminders how, even as gas prices have stabilized, green power is an irresistible opportunity to save money.

The idea for the treatment-plant turbine, said Dave Rouse, the recently retired Gresham environmental services director, came from the Oregon Association of Clean Water Agencies, acting on the results of a 2008 study funded in part by the Energy Trust of Oregon on whether energy efficiency and renewable power sources could drive energy needs at wastewater plants. Some might say it's common sense that a turbine producing energy from 13 million gallons of falling water is a no-brainer, but it took the proof of the Energy Trust study to move Gresham to take action.

Of course, if this is such a good idea, it begs the question: what about all the other cities with sewage treatment plants. Every city has one. What about Portland's? Eugene's? Salem's? What about legislation stipulating this at all Oregon water treatment plants? It starts with one entity like Gresham taking the first step, but initiatives such as these ultimately only do real good if they are followed like falling dominoes. And it's not as if water falling from sewage treatment plants is the only falling water that could be harnessed for turbines. Last time I checked, Portland lies at the confluence of two rivers. Is it time to bring back the water mill at an unprecedented mass scale?

This story also reminded me of some interviews I recently conducted for Oregon Business magazine as part of their recent 30th anniversary issue, in which business leaders from all around the state were asked for their ideas about the next 30 years. One person whom I interviewed, Gerding Edlen Development president Mark Edlen, focused on alternative energy:

"The holy grail I think for us is trash to energy," he said. "Renewable energy is a foregone concludsion. Processing sewage will be a foregone conclusion, and turning that into potable water. The notion of taking our trash and not just recycling but taking it and converting it into energy at a city level or community level will be a foregone conclusion."

Related to the sewage water Gresham is using, Edlen also said of the next 30 years, "Water’s going to be bigger than energy. I think we will more and more think about how natural systems happen and how we can work with them instead of against them."

Not that it exactly relates to alternative energy, but Edlen also pointed out how such technical and ecological innovation more broadly helps establish the city as it competes with the rest of the world.

"I see us being a city and a state where we will be leaders in new ideas," he explained. "I think that’s coming out of the sense of community we’re creating here. It involves leadership in urban design, in alternative transportation, deep leadership in sustainability - and not in just the built environment and energy but manufacturing, agriculture, even apparel, for example. As I look down the road 30 years, we are positioned up and down the west coast as being an affordable alternative and with a rich sense of community and well positioned on the Pacific Rim...I think the opportunities are coming out of these intstitutions along with the thought leadership and innovation, creativity, and the way we’ve built."

In the latest issue of The New Yorker, writer David Owen looks at a troubling potential conundrum of energy efficiency: the "rebound effect". The more efficient our cars, refrigerators and air conditioners become, the more of them get produced, and so the actual reduction in energy disappears.

There are all kinds of examples throughout history.

The Ford Model T, manufactured between 1908 and 1927, averaged between 13 and 21 miles per gallon. A century later, we've learned to use gasoline much more efficiently, but that has only led to bigger cars stuffed with energy-sucking electronic gadgets.

A refrigerator sold in America today uses three quarters less energy than the 1975 average, even though it is one-fifth larger and costs 60 percent less. Yet during this same 35-year time period, the global market for refrigeration has grown exponentially; moreover, far more people in the US now have a second fridge or freezer.

On a macro scale, this proves out too: Between 1984 and 2005, electricity production grew by about 66 percent despite economy-wide energy efficiency gains. Some of this can be attributed to population growth, but not all. Per-capita energy consumption rates also increased during this period, even though energy use per dollar of Gross Domestic Product fell by around 50 percent.

Owen's article is largely based around an idea called the "Jevons paradox" that dates to an 1865 book by Englishman William Jevons called "The Coal Question". At the time, Great Britain was the world's leading industrial, military and economic power. But Jevons argued that it couldn't last. The country's coal supply was rapidly depleting, and he postulated that even increased efficiency in the use of coal would not delay the process. "It is wholly a confusion of ideas," Jevons wrote, "to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to a diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth." The more efficiently we use power, the more power we'll want to use. This is also commonly known today as the rebound effect.

After all, few entities have been the focus of energy efficiency goals more than buildings. Together, homes and buildings consume more than a third of total energy used in the United States today. Locally and regionally, organizations like the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (whose BetterBricks wing is a Portland Architecture sponsor) have devoted millions of dollars to designing new buildings and renovating old ones so that less energy is consumed. And the design community has become a national leader in sustainability. Portland has more LEED-rated buildings than virtually any other American city, especially when you measure it on a per-capita basis. The first LEED Platinum-rated condo, large medical facility, and National Register-listed building are all located here.

Energy efficiency is also part of a national strategy, called "the fifth fuel" after coal, petroleum, nuclear, and renewables. In 2007 the United Nations Foundation called energy efficiency gains "the largest, most evenly geographically distributed and least expensive energy resource."

Is it a waste of time, energy, money and resources to design and build buildings with better insulation, more natural light, and smaller mechanical systems? I'm not completely sold on the Jevons paradox as it relates to architecture today, nor are experts unanimous about its relation to other current energy issues.

For starters, as explained to Owen by Lee Schipper, a senior research engineer at Stanford University's Precourt Energy Efficiency Center, the rebound effect is minimal because energy is a relatively small part of the overall economy, between six and eight percent. Efficiency gains today have much less power to stimulate consumption than industrial manufacturing gains in the 19th century like Jevons wrote about.

More specifically as it relates to architecture, building green needn't be seen as a stimulant to building more. There is, perhaps, an argument that in our drive to weatherize homes we will spend as much energy on manufacturing and transporting new materials as will be gained from reduced heating and cooling. But what are we going to do, stop fixing up our buildings or building new ones?

The one area in architecture where the Jevons paradox could hold true is with air conditioning. Just as there are more refrigerators and freezers in use both overall and per capita today, wiping away much of the efficiency gains made from appliances using less energy, air conditioning is much more prevalent than in previous generations. It's part of the reason that regions and cities with very warm climates like Arizona and Nevada and the South saw large population influxes over recent years. Then there's the international spread of air conditioning to developing countries. According to Owen's article, between 1997 and 2007 the use of air conditioning in China tripled. In india it's expected to increase almost tenfold between 2005 and 2020. Owen cites a 2009 study saying air conditioning already accounts for 40 percent of the electricity consumed in metropolitan Mumbai.

Even so, the rebound effect with air conditioning - overall use eating up efficiency gains - is not an argument for the ineffectiveness of green building and architecturally oriented energy efficiency. On the contrary: if millions more people are using AC, it's even more important that this happen in buildings with tightly sealed thermal envelopes (without leaks, in other words) so the AC be utilized as efficiently as possible. Therein, perhaps, lies the broader answer with questions of the rebound effect. Maybe it does exist, to a degree, but if so, that's an argument to fight for efficiency gains all the more.

If there's a lesson to be learned from hashing over the Jevon paradox and the rebound effect as it relates to energy efficiency, perhaps it's a matter of re-learning a bit of common sense: all the efficiency gains in the world don't matter if we don't also curb demand. And yet reducing demand is the last thing any economist wants to hear. The 2000s decade was largely about creating exponentially larger demand for real estate by relaxing home ownership financing rules. And even if we hadn't got carried away building new suburban cul de sacs and urban condos over the last ten years, the population here and especially in other countries continues to increase. All those bodies need electricity of some sort.

Yet there are things we can do on the demand side. Jimmy Carter was the last American president, more than three decades ago, to tell us to be smart about little things like turning the lights off in rooms we don't occupy. Behavior can be adjusted on the macro level, and that's as important as technical advances in efficiency. It's just that having more efficient air conditioners, TVs and refrigerators has to be coupled with anti-sprawl planning, mass transit, and other factors. And then there's the question of energy taxing. Price is as much a determinant of energy or other product/service use as efficiency. As even Jevon would have acknowledged 135 years ago about coal, how efficiently we use anything is merely an extension of how much we want or need to use it.

"Because our customers’ values power the way we operate, serving our customers means reflecting their diverse views in the way we do business," reads the Portland General Electric website. "It’s why we consistently lead the nation in renewable power programs and why our company and employees are deeply involved in serving the community."

Oh, and PGE stock is currently trading at about $20.02 per share on the New York Stock Exchange.

No wonder the utility has fought ruthlessly to keep belching coal into the Columbia Gorge.

As the utility has battled regulators over the future of the Boardman coal plant in eastern Oregon, PGE has become an indication of the downside of letting public resources like utilities act as private investor-owned corporations.

And as it happens, this can be detrimental to business. Regions that derive most of their power from coal can be hampered from attracting large corporate interests. Just ask Prineville and Facebook (see the update below).

Boardman is Oregon's only coal-fired power plant, producing 585 megawatts of power, enough to serve about 250,000 residential customers. Boardman produces power more cheaply than any other source PGE uses. But that comes with a big environmental cost, too: Boardman is also the state's biggest polluter. That would be unfortunate no matter where the plant's location, but as it happens, it is situated very close to the Columbia River.

PGE has been involved in a multi-year battle with Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality over exactly when this sooty, Dickens-esque behemoth will cease operations.

Under existing regulations, PGE must install between $500 million to $600 million of new controls at the plant by 2017. The company counter-proposed a much smaller investment: $41 million in haze and mercury reduction controls in exchange agreeing to shut the plant down in 2020. DEQ officials rejected that plan, saying it wouldn't meet federal standards, but said PGE could go ahead with the proposed controls immediately (instead of by 2017) if it shut the plant in 2015. Alternatively, the DEQ proposed two other options: either that PGE stick with its 2020 shutdown date but install an additional $320 million worth of new burners and scrubbers by 2014, or make a $100 million investment in new controls and a 2018 closure.

PGE leadership said both options were economically unfeasible, and estimates it would raise rates by an average of 3.2 to 4.6 percent over the next decade.

The utility also argued that one of the pollution control technologies proposed, called dry sorbent injection, has never been tested on a plant of Boardman's size and could result in other pollution violations.

And speaking of pollution violations, the Sierra Club wants the EPA to regulate coal ash, which the organization argues has severely polluted groundwater near Boardman. Did I mention Boardman is beside the mighty Columbia River that Lewis & Clark floated down on their way to the Pacific?

PGE proposes to spend about $100 million on new controls at the plant and extend the shutdown date until 2020. But here's the catch: If the State of Oregon doesn't accept its terms, PGE now says it will operate the Boardman plant until 2040.

Boardman Power Plant (image courtesy Alliance For Democracy)

"PGE intends to hold Oregon’s clean air—and the Columbia River Gorge—hostage," writes Nick Engelfried of Blue Oregon. "The Portland area’s main utility is throwing a giant-size temper tantrum, employing scary threats and unsubstantiated claims to get its way."

I wouldn't have thought a corporation that is allowed to operate a monopoly in supplying Oregonians with power would even have the right to negotiate with the state over how it can pollute or what pollution controls it can use. Can I negotiate what my tax rates are? Do you ever get to negotiate your vehicle fees at the DMV? But even if PGE has that right, it's also surprising to learn that the utility is trying to play hardball based almost solely on the fact that such pollution mitigation would come with a rate increase for customers.

On the New York Stock Exchange, PGE stock is currently trading at about $20 per share. Any entity with shareholders and a place in Wall Street trading is a machine set up to generate profits. But when a public utility grants the right to a corporation such as PGE, rates are not the only factor in providing service.

According to a report by Bloomberg, agencies like PGE actually are given incentives for clinging to fossil fuels. Governments last year gave $43 billion to $46 billion of support to renewable energy through tax credits, guaranteed electricity prices known as feed-in tariffs and alternative energy credits, the London-based research group said today in a statement. That compares with the $557 billion that the International Energy Agency last month said was spent to subsidize fossil fuels in 2008.

What's more, PGE has some wiggle room with its electricity rates. The average residential price per kiloWatt hour for PGE customers is 10.05 cents. The national average is 11.76 cents. In other words, PGE customers in Oregon already have far cheaper rates than customers elsewhere. That's thanks largely to the presence of Bonneville Dam, although PGE has a diverse mix of generating resources includes hydropower, coal and gas combustion, wind and solar, as well as key transmission resources. Its 13 power plants have a total combined generating capacity of 2,434 megawatts serving 52 Oregon cities and approximately 816,000 customers.

The nature of electrical utilities may be also changing in a way that makes companies like PGE less of a necessity. In the United States utilities are often natural monopolies because the infrastructure required to produce electricity s very expensive to build and maintain. As a result, they are often government monopolies, or if privately owned, the sectors are specially regulated by a public utilities commission. But developments in technology have eroded some of the natural monopoly aspects of traditional public utilities. More than ever, people are generating their own power via solar panels, wind turbines and other methods.

As it happens, PGE's threat to operate Boardman until 2040 if the DEQ doesn't accept its 2020 plan may be a bluff. To do this, PGE needs approval from Oregon’s Public Utilities Commission. And the commission would certainly understand operating Boardman until 2040 would mean gambling that at no point in the next thirty years will federal carbon regulations make operating a coal plant uneconomical. There could also be a state law or ballot initiative mandating the Boardman Plant’s closure.

But again, how have we ever arrived at this point? PGE is a hybrid entity - part private corporation, part public utility. Because of this setup, acting like a greedy corporation only looking out for shareholder profits is not acceptable behavior.

I began this post with a quote from PGE: "Our customers’ values power the way we operate." If that's the case, Portland General has only heard from customers seeking the cheapest possible power regardless of environmental consequences. That doesn't sound like Oregon values to me. It sounds like PGE may stand for "Prohibitively Gouging the Environment."

UPDATE, 9/2/10: The Associated Press is reporting that Greenpeace International has formally asked Facebook to abandon plans to buy electricity for its new data center near Prineville. The supplying party this time is PacifiCorp, which derives (depending on who issues the figures) 58 to 83 percent of its electricity from coal. How cheap does this power seem now, when it can act as a detriment to investing in Oregon?